The Amazon Kindle Fire: Benchmarked, Tested, And Reviewed

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A low price is earning Amazon's Kindle Fire a lot of press. We take a fine-tooth comb to this new tablet and turn up some surprising results. While there's a lot to like, there are also plenty of quirks. We go over the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Web Browsing: The Same Old Android Restrictions

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Aside from our issues with cloud acceleration, Amazon Silk works identically to the Web browsers on every other Android tablet. You can open multiple tabs and switch between desktop and mobile views.

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Amazon doesn't make it easy to select and copy text, though. The process is much simpler on Honeycomb-based devices because both options appear above Chrome's address bar.

You see the standard Android pop-up window when you select and hold your finger down on a hyperlink. Straightforward, right? But copying chunks of text remains difficult, since that same pop-up window doesn't appear after a selection.

Many webpages recognize the Android user agent to prevent you from playing Flash video. Silk is no exception, though that's not a problem unless you enjoy sites like Hulu.

Hulu

Comedy Central also blacklisted Android browsers since our last look at Flash. It's still possible to play few short HTML5-based clips on The Colbert Report, but full episodes are no longer available.

Comedy Central

We can play Flash video on CNN, though. The newest version of Flash does make playback noticeably smoother. Interestingly, installing Flash 11.1 on the Kindle Fire breaks VP6 Flash support, which is why you get a blank screen when Flash-based commercials play (you can still hear audio).

Andrew Ku